Meta-Biol

• Pathways

The 3' ends of eukaryotic mRNAs are generated by posttranscriptional processing of an extended primary transcript. For almost all RNAs, 3'-end processing consists of two steps: (i) the mRNA is first cleaved at a particular phosphodiester bond downstream of the coding sequence, (ii) the upstream fragment then receives a poly(A) tail of approximately 250 adenylate residues, whereas the downstream fragment is degraded. The two partial reactions are coupled so that reaction intermediates are usually undetectable. While 3' processing can be studied as an isolated event in vitro, it appears to be connected to transcription, splicing, and transcription termination in vivo.

The only known exception to the rule of cleavage followed by polyadenylation are the major histone mRNAs, which are cleaved but not polyadenylated.

Co-transcriptional pre-mRNA splicing is not obligatory. Pre-mRNA splicing begins co-transcriptionally and often continues post-transcriptionally. Human genes contain an average of nine introns per gene, which cannot serve as splicing substrates until both 5' and 3' ends of each intron are synthesized. Thus the time that it takes for pol II to synthesize each intron defines a minimal time and distance along the gene in which splicing factors can be recruited. The time that it takes for pol II to reach the end of the gene defines the maximal time in which splicing could occur co-transcriptionally. Thus, the kinetics of transcription can affect the kinetics of splicing.Any covalent change in a primary (nascent) mRNA transcript is mRNA Processing. For successful gene expression, the primary mRNA transcript needs to be converted to a mature mRNA prior to its translation into polypeptide. Eucaryotic mRNAs undergo a series of complex processing reactions; these begin on nascent transcripts as soon as a few ribonucleotides have been synthesized during transcription by RNA Polymerase II, through the export of the mature mRNA to the cytoplasm, and culminate with mRNA turnover in the cytoplasm.

This superpathway encompasses the processes by which RNA transcription products are further modified covalently and non-covalently to yield their mature forms, and the regulation of these processes. Annotated pathways include ones for capping, splicing, and 3'-cleavage and polyadenylation to yield mature mRNA molecules that are exported from the nucleus (Hocine et al. 2010). mRNA editing and nonsense-mediated decay are also annotated. Processes leading to mRNA breakdown are described: deadenylation-dependent mRNA decay, microRNA-mediated RNA cleavage, and regulation of mRNA stability by proteins that bind AU-rich elements.psnRNP assembly is also annotated here.

The aminoacylation of mature tRNAs is annotated in the "Metabolism of proteins" superpathway, as a part of "Translation".